In 1993, a small company outside Seattle invented a completely new type of game with Magic: The Gathering. It is a collectible card game which rapidly became popular around the world, has been printed in 9 languages, and quickly generated a large and growing competitive play circuit with significant cash prizes. Though players compete individually, it was quickly discovered that players who prepared for competitions collaboratively were at a big advantage over those who prepared in isolation. Other strategy games like chess, bridge, poker, and scrabble do not offer nearly as distinct an advantage to heavy collaborators: in fact, some would suggest that collaboration can be a disadvantage in these games.

The collaborative nature of FLOSS development is one of its greatest strengths: we look at the history of competitive Magic: The Gathering to understand why collaboration is powerful in this world, and compare it to FLOSS. What can FLOSS developers learn from competitive Magic, and what can competitive Magic learn from FLOSS?

Part 1

A brief history of Magic and a description of the game, focusing on the qualities that make it unique.

• How and why competitive Magic is collaborative.
• How Magic strategy is similar to technology.
• How Magic changed competitive Poker.

Part 2

A (very brief) outline of FLOSS history followed by a discussion of the similarities and differences between Magic strategy development and FLOSS development, covering the following topics:

• how new ideas are shared
• how new ideas are tested
• what can FLOSS learn from competitive Magic?
• what can competitive Magic learn from FLOSS?